


A Monster Among Its Kind

by DarkStarNocturne



Category: RWBY
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-15
Updated: 2020-08-15
Packaged: 2021-03-06 03:08:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,489
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25916374
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DarkStarNocturne/pseuds/DarkStarNocturne
Summary: I figure this would be pre-v3's ending, so no robot arm.  Been a while, though, so I'm not sure whether Yang would know who Adam is.Yang is seeing her story from Burning the Candle, but I figure it works well enough without that knowledge, given her being Ruby's sister.Also this story is specifically about the Wendigo, but seeing as none of them know what it is and the boss Grimm are rarely named in the show, I didn't see any reason to name-drop.





	A Monster Among Its Kind

Walking into the woods that night, I remember now how quiet it was, no birdsong or insects chirping, not even a crow cawing to make it more eerie.

Even with that in mind, we went in confident as usual, letting Ruby and Yang chatter on to fill the void. Regardless of how many hunts we went on, walking into a silent forest made my skin crawl; there should be life in the woods, sounds other than the ghostly rattle of dying leaves on branches, the occasional tiny snap as one breaks free and drifts down to join the crackling carpet underfoot. Worse is the branches clicking and rasping as they bend in the breeze, making the shadows in the moonlight shift and dance. Sometimes that makes my vision swim, even with my night eyes, and the last thing I need on a hunt is to feel like the whole world’s warping around me.

Weiss, walking beside me, laid a hand on my shoulder, and I turned to look at her, squinting at her bright white dress against the dark. “Just wanted to see if you were okay. You look like a cat backed into a corner.”

I glared at her a moment, then relented, slumping my shoulders sighing. “It’s fine,” I said, trying to smile. “Just nervous as usual.”

“It’s weird you’re like that,” she replied, walking up beside me. I joined her in following our two chatty teammates. “You being a cat faunus and all.”

“Yeah, well.” My eyes darted all over, taking in the trees and shadows and moonlight that comprised the surroundings. “Walking into the forest after Grimm like this, it’s better to go in a little worried.”

“You seem more than a little worried.”

“It’s the quiet.” I closed my eyes and listened with all my might, but still couldn’t find a living voice beyond our group, animal or otherwise. Grimacing, I continued, “As cliché as it sounds, it’s too quiet, even for a Grimm hunt.”

“Must be a big group.” She drew Myrtenaster. “Think we can take them?”

“Sure. Probably.” Wrapping my arms around myself, I shivered. The silence was getting to me, even with Ruby and Yang chatting up ahead. It was the echoes, really, the way their voices bounced off the trees, the hollow aspect of the forest noise’s absence creeping into my mind, my instincts warning me to run. With a shake of my head, I relaxed and drew Gambol Shroud. “We’ll know when we find them.”

We walked on for a while, Weiss scanning the trees while I kept my ears open and eyes sharp. The other two kept talking, though Yang engaged Ember Celica while Ruby shifted her right hand to rest on Crescent Rose. We slowed over time as well, going from a stroll to a creep, Yang and Ruby whispering, then falling silent as well, keeping their eyes on the road ahead to watch for trouble.

A sharp crack split the air. Yang jumped, arms and fists raised, then relaxed. “Just a bit of bone,” she said, waving our concern away.

A shard of white lay on the path, and we stared at it. Then the fragment dissolved, fading into a powder that blackened and drifted away on the breeze.

Ruby voiced my thought. “Grimm bone armor?”

Weiss chimed in. “What would that be doing here?”

Yang shrugged. “Well, it faded away, so it’s one less Grimm. What’s the big deal?”

I could only stare at the spot where part of a dead monster had lain. Who, or what, was hunting the hunters? Worse, there hadn’t been any noise. Grimm tended to roar or growl when attacked or attacking, so whatever took this one down had slain it instantly. What kind of power did this thing or person have to manage that?

Someone nudged my shoulder, and I started. Looking up, I found Ruby watching me. “Are you worried?”

“Yes.” I touched the ground where we’d found the bone armor. “Something’s… someone’s after the Grimm besides us. What, or who, is it?”

“I don’t know.” She checked Crescent Rose’s chamber, then snapped it back into place. “We should stick together just in case.”

As much as I agreed, we needed to clear out these woods as quickly as possible and leave. I shook my head. “We’ll cover more ground in our teams. Though with a hunter around, putting our scrolls on vibrate might be a good idea.”

She nodded. “Let’s do that.” Everyone took out their scrolls and fiddled with them, then Ruby did a test to check. “Alright,” she said, putting hers away, “We’ll split up here and go off the path in opposite directions. Yang and Blake, you go that way.” She pointed to the left. “Weiss and I will head off on the other side. Don’t jump in without signaling. Ready?” The rest of us nodded. “Alright,” she said, moving off the path, “See you guys soon.”

Yang laid a hand on my shoulder, gave me a reassuring nod, then led the way in the opposite direction. I looked behind us and saw the path, a tiny lane of dappled moonlight, shrinking as we headed into the silent shadows beyond it. I wanted to call everyone back and go home, but buried the feeling with a list of things to look out for.

Crushed undergrowth. Snapped twigs. Clawed bark. Absence of local wildlife. The four primary indicators of Grimm presence, as taught by Port between long-winded tales of personal heroism. I smiled to think of boring classes in a warm, bright room, far from this place, then turned my attention back to the situation at hand.

I felt a tap on my shoulder and turned to see Yang falling in behind me, looking around to our sides and rear. Nodding in return, I dropped to a half-crouch and led the way through the undergrowth, checking the forest floor ahead of us for tracks. We went on for a long time in this way, and the silence grew even more oppressive in the meantime, both of us looking from time to time to our scrolls.

The only change, either a few minutes or a lifetime into our search, was a faint mist on the ground. I didn’t notice it much at first, but over time it reached up over my knees, obscuring my view of the forest floor and forcing me to abandon checking for tracks in favor of creeping along to avoid making noise, though it was so thick It might have muffled the sound anyway. Strange, though, from my experience with mist in other places my shoes and stockings ought to have been soaked after walking in it even a short time, but I was dry as before. I wanted to stop and mention this to Yang, but we’d gone far enough that making any noise seemed unwise, so I chose to press on and hope we’d find the Grimm soon.

Over time, the mist reached my waist so we seemed to be wading through it. Even the tallest undergrowth didn’t reach that high, which meant we appeared to be walking through a shallow, white sea with trees growing out of it. I hoped this forest didn’t have any swampland, and as I thought that, I remembered a mission in Forever Fall with Adam, the one where I broke ties with him and the White Fang. Back then, as I ran from the train, his eyes still upon me, I had the same worry, that there might be a bog or swamp ahead of me as I ran, still conscious of what I was leaving behind and not yet focused on what lay ahead. I could trust my instincts to help me avoid trees, as I was doing tonight, but the ground could look solid and yet not be so. As a result, every footfall became a persistent dread, thinking the earth could swallow me up before I managed to get away, as if in retribution for my betrayal.

I pulled my thoughts back to the present. If nothing else, I could hope to notice the ground being softer underfoot and pull back before it was too late. With Yang behind me, I could hope for a rescue as well, her well-honed battle reflexes enough to haul me back from the brink. Smiling in spite of myself and the situation, I thought I was lucky, now, to have someone like that to rely on and not in some way fear, as I had with Adam despite my admiration.

A flicker in the distance caught my eye, a faint color against the background. I turned my gaze toward it and focused, though with the mist, my vision swam a bit, leaving the distance vague, shifting as I watched. Shadows seemed to distort, trees bending and waving without a breeze, moonlight playing tricks with my sight, twisting and weaving through the mist.

Something moved at the edge of sight, a faint color in a black and white world. I strained to see it, squinting my eyes and coming to a halt with my arm outstretched to warn Yang. Red. Grimm eyes?  
A shiver ran up my spine. That could mean Grimm, yes, but in this case I knew it wasn’t. Grimm eyes aren’t long and thin, and while they are accompanied by black bodies, said bodies don’t have pale skin and red hair. His mask gave him the appearance of a phantom, a hunter in the mist, as he walked through the woods, sword in hand.

I stood frozen in place. So it was a hunter after all, out for the Grimm just the same as us, probably trying to win over the village offering the reward. No. I shook my head. There were humans too, not just faunus. He could be trying to impress the latter, win them to his cause, but if they were living with humans, he was just as likely to abandon them, show what their decision cost them. So what did he have to gain, wandering through these woods?

My mind raced. He had the power to kill Grimm quickly and quietly, no question. Was he the one who got the Grimm on the road? I needed answers, or at least someone to talk to about it, but he would hear, or the Grimm would, out in these silent woods. If nothing else I could find comfort in my team, so I moved to a nearby tree and turned to get Yang’s attention.

She wasn’t there.

Where I thought I’d find her there stood nothing but more dark trees in the pale mist. Suppressing the desire to yell for her, I felt my eyes darting in every direction, hoping to find Yang in position for a strike or something, anything other than her absence from my side; I didn’t want to be alone in this forest, especially not with Adam.

I looked around my tree and found her standing behind another nearby, which calmed me for a moment before I realized she stood too still, her fingers buried in the bark of the tree, holding herself in place. Slipping through the trees to her side, so as not to make a sound, I put a hand on her shoulder. “We have to go,” I hissed in her ear. “Someone’s here, someone dangerous.”

Yang didn’t appear to notice me. Her grip tightened on the tree, and I heard the wood splintering in her grip. Curious and concerned, I walked around to see her face, get her attention that way, and saw her eyes wide, teeth gritted, shoulders hunched. She looked as hunted as I felt, but also ready to spring, a cat deciding whether to pounce or flee. “Ruby…” she whispered.

“We can go back to the path and wait for their call,” I said, as low and quiet as I could. “There’s someone here who can handle anything, and we don’t want to be around when he does.”

Still she gave no sign of hearing me at all. Feeling frustrated, I turned to see what could possibly have her attention and found nothing but empty woodland, a small clearing nearby filling with the mist, in appearance a pool of white surrounded by black, branching pillars.

I turned to Yang and found, to my alarm, that her eyes were turning from purple to red, a sure sign she’d soon fly off the handle. “Not now!” I hissed. “There’s nothing there, Yang! Calm down, we need to leave this place.” Reaching out, I took her shoulders in both hands, which turned out to be a mistake as she nearly took my right arm off charging into the clearing.

“I won’t let you hurt her!” she yelled, hurtling into the mist and out of sight. I held my right shoulder with my left hand, willing the pain to subside, eyes running over the trees and mist, seeking any movement. Something had to have heard or seen that, and I wouldn’t put it past Adam, if he had, to take her for an enemy and do away with her. Trouble was, both he and Yang had a head start. Yang wouldn’t be any trouble to find, but Adam, well, I had to get going now and hope for the best.

Abandoning stealth, I charged through the trees in the direction Yang had gone, snapping twigs along the way, the sound echoing like gunfire in the near-silence. Each time I felt a twinge, knowing making this much noise went heavily against my usual strategy, but I ignored it and my shoulder as best I could, both throbbing constantly in my mind along with the thought of Adam and fear for Yang. I stumbled through the forest, missing trees by inches.

In the end I gave up and started yelling as well. “Yang!” I called, again and again, hoping maybe I’d draw attention away from her, knowing all the while that Yang in full onslaught could never be ignored. She needed support, she needed to call the team – the team! Cursing myself for forgetting, I reached down and tapped my scroll, felt it buzz, and pushed it out of my mind. The device would act as a beacon, showing Weiss and Ruby where I was, so all I had to do was make my way to Yang.

What seemed strange, once I focused on that one thought, was the lack of Grimm. Negative emotions drew them, so they should be flocking to Yang, who would probably slaughter them in this state, granted, but other than her thundering progress and my pursuit, not a sound reached my ears. Then I realized Adam would’ve caught up long ago as well, yet Yang seemed unhindered in her wild flight. Another thought occurred to me; Yang saw something I didn’t. Was the reverse true as well?

The White Fang’s current hideout was in the next continent over, a fair bit of land and ocean away. Adam being in these woods at the same time as us, even if he was hunting me, he could be anywhere on either continent. Why would he be here now of all times? So discounting Adam, that left only one option: Grimm. Dry mist, hallucinations, it all made sense. Granted, I’d never heard of a Grimm that could do such a thing, but there were always rare Grimm. So there could be something out there almost no one knew about, meaning its powers would be unknown, or at least unrecorded.

Whatever it was, I knew one of its powers now. Seizing my scroll, I typed a message to Weiss and Ruby: Don’t breathe the mist, use Ruby’s Semblance to clear it and close distance. Putting it away, I grabbed a particular Dust cartridge and loaded it into Gambol Shroud, then holstered it and pelted onward, shaking my head to clear it now and then.

Ahead of me Yang’s noise ceased, and I dug my heels into the ground to stop myself. In that time I heard a strange cracking underfoot, but had no time to investigate it and put it down to more branches and twigs, maybe sturdier than usual. Leaning up against a tree for cover, I peered around it to look for Yang only to find a nightmare made real.

Rising up through the mist stood a thin, black form out of an ancient dream, the sort of thing people without Dust rightly feared lurked in the dark. A darker tree with two thin, drooping limbs topped by a bone-white deer skull painted with partly-faded red lines and pierced in its hollow eye-sockets with twin red-rimmed amber lights, the thing looked down at Yang, who stood slack-jawed, panting with exhaustion in the middle of a glade before it. The mist rolled thick from its chest cavity, white ribs opened wide on both sides. I covered my mouth with one hand, but even so, its form flickered, dissolving and reforming into Adam, who turned to face my direction and drew his sword, blood-red even in the color-washing moonlight.

I shook my head, drew Gambol Shroud, and aimed. My instincts demanded that I point toward Adam’s forehead, but I squinted and drew a bead on a place above the fountain of mist, locking on a spot where I remembered vividly a deer skull must be. Pulling the trigger, I looked away to shield my eyes from the light that erupted from the muzzle, flew through the air, and stuck on something near the canopy. The image of Adam faded, leaving the nightmare thing in its place with a spark of lightning twisting around itself above the eyes and between the antlers. Reaching up a claw, it scratched at the thing, crying in a twisted imitation of a child. Yang looked up, alert, and extended a hand to it, defenseless. “Ruby?” she said, the hope in her voice discordant against the horror before her.

Yang’s voice snapped it out of its confusion, and it reached for her, maw opening in anticipation. I didn’t wait to see what fresh terror this would be, but leapt from my hiding place and tackled Yang. “Stay down!” I yelled at her, covering my head and hoping against hope my plan would work.

I waited for pain, for the thing to seize or slash me for taking its prey away, all the while keeping the hallucinations at bay with a single thought. Weiss, Ruby, and I designed that cartridge together, reasoning that electricity produced the light, and if we could keep it focused on a single point, that would make a good target at a distance.

A sharp, metallic crack echoed through the trees, the sound scattering as something heavy hurtled through the air. I envisioned the Grimm raising its head to investigate, only for its skull to implode as a tiny boom reverberated through the glade. Hearing the sound, I looked up to see it toppling backward as its form dissolved into black smoke. The last of its body faded away as I rose, pulling Yang up with me, and the skull thudded into the earth, split in two around a shattered central point.

We heard a gigantic whooshing sound and looked up just in time for Ruby to tackle us both back to the ground, hugging us tightly. A whirring announced Weiss’s arrival and, uncharacteristically, she joined us in a pile on the earth. “We got so worried!” said Ruby. “We didn’t run into anything for ages, and it was really weird, and I was telling Weiss so, and she was telling me to be quiet, and –“

“And then we got your message,” finished Weiss, looking at me. “Glad we did, whatever could do that would’ve been real trouble if we hadn’t known.”

“It really was,” I replied, glancing toward the Grimm’s former location. The skull began to disintegrate at the edges, starting with the antlers.

The others looked at it as well. “That’s not what I saw,” croaked Yang, prompting Ruby to hug her even tighter.

“It’s okay,” she said, smiling and staring Yang in the eye. “I’m here now.”

“Yeah…” Yang wiped tears from her eyes and gave Ruby a bear hug. “Yeah, you are.”

After a while, we all stood and stared at the split skull, still slowly fading away in pieces. “What was it, anyway?” Weiss asked, looking at Yang and me.

“Something not many people know about,” I said.

Shivering, Yang wrapped an arm around Ruby. “Well,” she said, trying to smile, “You two can tell Records all about it when we get home, see if it’s in there somewhere. Right now, I want to go home.”

The mist, as if with the skull, dissipated, falling from waist height down to the forest floor, and we looked around to see shards of Grimm masks littering the ground throughout the glade, almost covering the earth.

Eyes wide, Ruby voiced our collective thought. “Yeah… let’s go.”

**Author's Note:**

> I figure this would be pre-v3's ending, so no robot arm. Been a while, though, so I'm not sure whether Yang would know who Adam is.
> 
> Yang is seeing her story from Burning the Candle, but I figure it works well enough without that knowledge, given her being Ruby's sister.
> 
> Also this story is specifically about the Wendigo, but seeing as none of them know what it is and the boss Grimm are rarely named in the show, I didn't see any reason to name-drop.


End file.
